My wife pulled her hamstring a few weeks back. She didn’t know how, but she spent the next couple weeks afterwards re-injuring it. It seemed like every time she stood up or tried to move quickly, she was grabbing her leg and yelling “ow!”

One evening during this tender time for her, the four of us went to a playground. We played on the jungle gym for a while, and then ran to a nearby field to play tag. She sat by the playground to chat with some other moms. We had a good long (tiring) game of tag, and just as I was running out of steam, she walked over to gather us up to go home.

Our oldest immediately launched into the “just a few minutes more” speech. N, however, was “it” at that point. N ran to stand just out of arm’s reach from his momma. “Come on! Play with us! Play!”

She smiled and rubbed the back of her leg meaningfully, “I’m sorry. I can’t. My leg still hurts.”

“Don’t worry, momma! I won’t run too fast. You can still play!”

Heh. How do you say no to that?

She grinned and hobbled away over the field, with him pretending to run after her, but carefully keeping out of arm’s reach.

I flopped down in the grass to watch. Big mistake. As soon as the little guy saw me lying down, he ran back and tagged me. Sheesh.